This is the last post of the 3×3 challenge that Cloudio and I put together to experiment with writing, always selecting random subjects and inventing strange rules.
It has been so much fun that Cloudio decided to set as a rule to condensate the last 3 articles in a single one, but of 333×3=999 words instead of the standard (for me, not for him apparently) 333 words format.
We believe that the 333 words format will become the de facto standard in the blogosphere, as Google Ranking algorithm responded extremely well to our posts and ranked our blogs very very high in the search result pages.
From my side, I decided to challenge Cloudio with this subject.
“What I appreciate in people” is not an easy one because both me and him are quite critical and have the “natural” tendency of see more the bad things than the good things in whomever we meet.
I keep on telling myself how great would be if I could stop judging people, but I can’t!
Do you know how I can stop being judgmental?
I noticed that the older I grow, the more I find difficult to find people I really appreciate.
On one side, became very easy for me to notice the things that I don’t appreciate, and I lower my level of tolerance towards them.
On the other side, I follow my own path and process to be where I’m now, leaving behind a lot of assumptions, dogmas, cliché and finding them in other people make me loose interest immediately.
But OK, this post is about what I appreciate in people and now about what I dislike so let’s focus on that.
Being this a 3×3 challenge, I specially appreciate 3 things in the people around me: genuineness, courage, life experiences.
Genuineness
I think being genuine is the gate to prosperity and fulfillment.
The famous “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” quote from Oscar Wilde has much more charm for me than “The Picture of Dorian Gray”.
Being genuine is not easy because it struggle with the “please everyone” approach. To please everyone we present our self to other people wearing a “mask” that we think they will like.
I suspect that the real reason why football is so popular has more to do with providing a common discussion topic than about the sport itself.
You like football? me too! WOW we click.
Unfortunately I never liked football but this didn’t make me more genuine, because I’m empathetic (meaning the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings (such as sadness or happiness) that are being experienced by another sentient or semi-sentient being).
The necessity of connect with people made me create multiple Daniele’s versions to match the different people around me.
This made the way to genuineness particularly difficult for me, but when you less expect my biggest passion, Salsa, comes in the play to rescue me.
When you’re dancing, you can’t be anyone else than you.
Yes, you can emulate your favorite dancer, like I tried to emulate for long time Fermando Sosa, but ultimately is still you showing your genuinely limited skills.
You can perceive genuineness in people, as much as you can perceive that boring, sad, annoying feeling of pretending being someone they’re not.
Ultimately, I realized that everyone likes genuine people exactly because of that.
Everyone feels when someone is genuine, and it generates automatic appreciation.
Courage
When I left Italy to embrace the new exciting work career and life in Amsterdam, one of the more recurring question I got was “what a courage! don’t you have fear?”.
It made an impression on me because it took me sometime to understand what they meant.
The best quote for courage comes from Anais Nin, that I don’t know who was but said the wisest words that “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage”.
How much true is that??
Fear is a big barrier to ability to live as we want, and I already wrote about it on my SalsaWalkAbout blog so I won’t repeat the 489 words of that post.
I admire people that have courage, I respect them a lot, being courage of being truly genuine or courage to take risks to follow their dream.
Courage is often confused with craziness, when the action is coming from a personal choice that goes against the convenience of a risk-adverse normal lifestyle.
Life experiences
I could have said honesty, respect, positiveness. All qualities seek in the people around me and that I really appreciate.
Instead I decided to write how much I appreciate the life experiences of people, because lately I found extremely fascinating to listen to them.
Thanks to my friend Laura, a person that has life experiences to sell, I got to discover a storytelling night held by the Iranian cultural center here in A’dam.
Both professional and amateurs are standing up to share their life stories in front of a very mixed crowd in a living-room style atmosphere.
Beside the mastering of the English language, was mesmerized me was the beauty of the life experiences of those people.
Not all happy stories, of course, but intense, educational, enriching, amazing.
I realized how much I appreciate people that had such experiences and how much boring my life seems compared to their.
That’s one of the reasons why I decided to spice it up quitting my comfortable corporate stellar salary job.
Now I feel like I spoke too much about myself and not enough about the people I appreciate, but the title I choose was unconsciously made for that, as it’s “What I appreciate in people” and not “People I appreciate”.
This 3×3 challenge, dear Claudio, ends here and it was a great opportunity to write terrible posts, be uncomfortable and have unneeded pressure.
And understand something about our self and each other.
Thanks for asking me to join this writing idea, it was a flattering honor.
People are entertaining. People are amazing. People, sometimes, are useless.
I couldn’t agree more with those 3 points!
.. and reading “write terrible posts, be uncomfortable and have unneeded pressure” gave me a good laugh, thanks Daniele 🙂
Thanks Chris!
You give me motivation to write again.
For some strange reason, you are my only reader left 🙂
Thank you Daniel san. You clearly lost the challenge, according the Committee (of one) (yes, me, of course) but you have been a good competitor
Interesting posts and views!